Armenia

One of the most striking things I first noticed after moving to Armenia was the importance of strong extended family networks – and the extent to which this aspect of Armenian social structure has evolved over time, transcending distance and getting ever-stronger through adversity.

This solid social network is an essential element in understanding and responding to the challenges that Armenia faces – and it can, if well-mobilized, help boost the country’s ability to reduce poverty and ensure that economic growth and prosperity are shared among all.

On Sunday, March 8th, we celebrate International Women’s Day. In Armenia, the date is also a national holiday and, coincidentally, this year it marks exactly six months since I arrived in Yerevan to lead the World Bank team here.

So, for me this is an opportune moment to pause and reflect on some of the gender realities that I am learning about in Armenia, including their influence on socio-economic dynamics.

It’s hard to get a break in the Europe and Central Asia region, it seems – even a short one. Hit hard by the troubles in the Eurozone at the beginning of the decade, emerging and developing countries in Eastern Europe are, at the beginning of this year, contending with renewed fears. Meanwhile, external pressures have built up on the Central Asia side as well.

All eyes turned to Russia recently, when on 16 December the ruble plunged by more than 11 percent, despite the Central Bank of Russia’s last-minute interest rate hike of 6.5 percentage points to 17 percent. When it looked like Russia’s turmoil might spread to global markets, western economies sat up and paid close attention.

What may have gone unnoticed, however, is the ongoing impact on our client countries in the Europe and Central Asia region.

I recently spent three days in Yerevan on a mission to learn a bit more about Armenia’s overall development challenges for a World Bank study on “Connectivity”, before heading off to Tbilisi, Georgia and Baku, Azerbaijan to do the same.

It was my first time visiting Armenia, so it was a fascinating trip and I learned a tremendous amount about the country and its people.

Of course, in three days one can only get a small sample of the major issues that challenge development, rather than a rich flavor for the deep subtleties that represent the people or factors that drive the economy. But, given my basic knowledge of the country, the new information I gained was a tremendous leap forward.

Would you be more willing to pay taxes if you didn’t have to spend hours doing it, or if you see that money being used in the right way? Well, you are not alone.

Armenians, like people around the world, feel the same. According to the recently conducted Tax Perception Survey in the country, easier tax compliance and more visible link between taxes paid and public services received was found to be particularly important.

Between 66 percent and 75 percent of respondents said they would be more willing to pay more taxes if the procedures were easy and less time-consuming, if they saw more useful social and other public services, or if they saw less corruption.

Over 95 percent of respondents felt the tax burden is heavy or very heavy, while almost 50 percent reported that evading tax payments was not justified under any circumstances.

About 57 percent noted that high taxes or desperate financial situations were the main reasons for avoiding or evading tax payments.

The data unveiled by the latest Tax Perception Survey, carried out with USAID support and World Bank Group technical assistance covered around 1,500 households and 400 business taxpayers. The analysis strengthened the need to modernize the tax system, which has remained a major challenge for Armenia. Despite Armenia’s ranking as 37th in Doing Business, the taxation system, at 103rd on the list, still requires a lot of work.

To be sure, there have been some improvements to the system in the past few years. They include the introduction of electronic filing of tax returns, e-government applications, risk-based audit principles, and taxpayer service centers and appeal system. These achievements contributed to increasing the tax to GDP ratio from 19.5 percent in 2010 to 22.8 percent in 2013.

But much remains to be done to further streamline and simplify tax procedures, modernize the tax administration, and enact a tax code.

If I had to pick one critical source of exports and a key driver of economic growth for Armenia, I would pick mining.

But mining is a risky business and is fraught with hurdles. Exploration often comes up empty. Investments are very large, in excess of hundreds of millions dollars. Commodity prices can change dramatically and governments can change policies and taxes. Moreover, there can be large environmental and social risks associated with things like tailings, dams, and resettlement policies.

A risky business does not, however, mean that mining is or should be an irresponsible business. Many of these risks can be mitigated or eliminated. This requires proper policies, laws, regulations, careful implementation, and planning for life when the mine closes – all of this even before the mine opens. Supporting policies, such as easy access to updated geological information and predictability in transferring licenses, reduce the risk in exploration.

The World Bank recently interviewed several families in Armenia to depict the hardships people face when they cannot earn more than $5 a day per person. The country faces long, harsh winters and paying to stay warm and eat enough to survive the cold can quickly eat into the poor's meager incomes.

The Face of Poverty package aims to show how tough life can be for these families and their belief that education is the singular way out of poverty for their children.

Tim Richards, Mine Manager of the Amulsar Gold Mine explains the mine
lay-out to Chris Sheldon, Sector Manager of Mining at the World Bank.

Armenians love beach vacations. The problem is, their local options along the shore of Lake Sevan are not always good enough. Armenia being a landlocked country, reaching other beaches involves a long drive to the Georgian coast on the Black Sea, or at least two flights—one to reach Moscow or a European hub, and the next to get to an actual beach. The latter option has another snag: flying out of Armenia is expensive, and offers little flexibility when it comes to choosing routes and departure times.

Until recently, Armenia was not only landlocked, but also policy locked: a restrictive aviation policy limited options and increased prices for passengers and cargo coming in to or leaving Armenia’s Zvartnots airport outside of Yerevan, the capital. The government had granted exclusive rights to a private, Armenian-owned airline, Armavia, for ten years starting in 2003, and therefore restricted competition from foreign airlines. So, even a regular holiday sometimes started with a long road trip to Georgia’s capital Tbilisi to connect with cheaper flights there.

Cities have always been the driving forces of world civilizations. What Niniveh was to the Assyrian civilization, Babylon was to the Babylonian civilization. When Peter the Great, third in the Romanov Dynasty, became Russia’s ruler in 1696, Moscow’s influence began to expand. Peter strengthened the rule of the tsar and westernized Russia, at the same time, making it a European powerhouse and greatly expanding its borders. By 1918, the Russian empire spanned a vast territory from Western Europe to China.

As Peter the Great and his successors strove to consolidate their reign over this empire, major social, economic, cultural, and political changes were happening in the urban centers. Moscow led these changes, followed by St. Petersburg, which was built as a gateway to filter and channel western civilization through the empire. By fostering diversification through connectivity, specialization, and scale economies, these cities started the structural transformation of the Russian empire away from depending on commodities and limited markets in a way that more effectively served local demand.

Browsing through a large departmental store in Yerevan, I selected a tie, pair of trousers and a shirt to make up for having arrived in the city before my suitcases did. The store manager pointed me to three different cash counters for the three items I had purchased. “But isn’t this all one store,” I asked in my inadequate Russian, that never fails to amuse native speakers. “Perhaps,” she smiled. “But never mind; these are different otdels (units).”

While governments around the world try to use simplified regimes to decrease the compliance burden of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), it also opens the door wide open for larger businesses to abuse these regimes either by hiding as a small business, or splitting a larger business into smaller units. This is particularly true when there are few checks on firms entering the simplified regime. Think aforementioned department store!